ART IN A TIME OF ADVERTISING

Nothing in America is so brilliant a symbol of the nation’s wealth as New York’s Times Square, that dazzling ad-scape, where each sunset gives way to a neon-and-tungsten gloaming that lasts until dawn. But a recession could dim the lights. Nowadays, more and more billboards are going blank, and the Wall Street Journal has reported a drop in shares of outdoor advertisers. Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, a big billboard company, announced a 25% decrease in revenues during the first quarter of the year.

Advertisers are now looking to more creative, less costly ways to reach the public. Some have begun taking over vacant storefronts (of which there are plenty) or hiring guerrilla-marketing companies to plaster poster-sized advertisements on construction sheds and scaffolding across the city—even though this practice is illegal.

And while the city government is combating large-scale clutter overhead, it may soon sell legal ad space on pavement sheds and waste bins.

Jordan Seiler, a local artist who tracks such developments on his website, decided he’d had enough. On a recent Saturday morning, he sent teams of volunteers into Manhattan and Brooklyn to whitewash over street-level advertisements. That same afternoon, artists—many of them Seiler’s friends—painted or plastered artworks onto the newly blank spaces.

“I’m sure what I’m doing is illegal”, Seiler told me the night before he put his plan to action. But he had been reassured by some lawyers. “They were saying something about an ‘unclean hands’ clause. Basically we’re doing something illegal after [advertisers] have already done the same thing illegally, and we have a better cause for it.”

On the day of Seiler's street activism, I followed a team of white-washers whose work went unnoticed by passing police cars (but not by Reverend Billy’s anti-shopping campaigners, who gifted the painters with badges). Later, in a cafe on the Bowery, a participating artist watched as crowds gathered across the street in front of her life-sized drawings of people with animal heads.

The event was captured on video, and several local publications and consumer blogs carried the story. In the end, only four of Seiler’s volunteers were arrested. But by Sunday, most of the sites had been re-papered with advertisements.

Perhaps the relationship between artists and advertisers needn't be so fraught. Seiler says the city should legalise street-level billboards for both artists and advertisers, and allow anyone to post material at any time, for free. If that happened, Seiler believes, residents would begin to tear down adverts and protect the works of art.

But while art can accomplish many things, generating money for the city is not one of them. At least, not without a corporate sponsor.

~ JESSICA GALLUCCI

Picture credit: Jessica Gallucci